About Actions and NotificationsAbout Actions and NotificationsWhen you create an escalation point, you must associate at least one action or notification to it before you can activate the escalation. You are not required to have both actions and notifications. When the system finds records that meet the condition(s) defined by the escalation point, it will run the action(s) and notification(s) associated with that escalation point.
An action is an event you want the system to trigger when it finds records that meet the condition(s) defined by the escalation point, such as changing a status or an owner. When you add an action, you can select a preexisting action and assign it a sequence number (if multiples). The system defaults the description and the action type, which is based upon the record and action you chose. You can also go to the Actions application to create a new action and return it for use with your current escalation.
Action types define categories of actions. You create actions in the Actions application. The system ships with a number of predefined action types, such as Set Owner, Status Change, or Create Ticket. You can create new action types, if needed.
Action groups are predefined sets of actions that are grouped together in a specific sequence. The system associated an escalation point with one or more actions through the action group. If you associate even a single predefined action, the system still creates an action group for that action, and attaches the predefined action as a member of that group. The system associates only the group with the escalation point, not the action itself. The system contains many predefined escalations, and those escalations include predefined action groups. You can add your own action groups in the Actions application, or the system will create them automatically when you add actions in the Escalations (SP) application.
A notification is an email that you want the system to send when it finds records that meet the condition(s) defined by the escalation point. For example, if a service desk agent does not complete assignments within six hours, you can configure the system to escalate the assignment to that person's supervisor (by changing the owner via an action) and send an e-mail notification to the supervisor as well.
You can create two types of notifications: free-form notifications or template-based notifications. Free-form notifications require you to define only a role/recipient, subject, and message. You can also use communication templates to add or create a predefined, template-based notification to an escalation point.